Perennially frozen slopes occur in many mountain ranges of the world, and temperature changes in these environments have notable impacts on the state of permafrost, leading to increased slope instability and hazard from mass movements. In areas of discontinuous permafrost, these slopes can be hard to identify with certainty. This project investigates “molards” – cones of loose debris that result from thawing of blocks of ice-rich sediments mobilised by landslides in permafrost terrains. Molards are an understudied landform and have recently been shown to be an indicator of recent and ongoing permafrost degradation. In addition, they have spatial and geomorphic characteristics that reveal the dynamics of large mass movements. The PERMOLARDS project aims to build on these exciting new results and use molards as a geomorphological tool to understand climate change and natural hazard. We will use a multidisciplinary combination of field investigation, dating, laboratory and numerical simulations, modelling and remote sensing analysis to understand molard formation, evolution, morphology, longevity, and their environmental settings. We will explore three unique case studies in Greenland, Canada and Iceland, where we have identified with certainty molards that formed under climatic conditions from the Holocene to the present in a variety of geographic settings. We will constrain the morphological degradation of molards in space and time by using a morphological approach and novel luminescence dating techniques. We will define the range of material properties and ice configurations under which molards can form through field investigations and through simulation via analogue models in a laboratory cold room. Based on these results ancient molards can then be used to infer ground-ice contents. We will establish the baseline criteria to distinguish molards from other mounds in landslide deposits using remote sensing and field data that can be used by other researchers. We will use 3D numerical models to assess the potential role of thaw fluids in molard-hosting landslides in modifying the flow behaviour and its impact on hazard. We will monitor and model the state of permafrost at the field site in Greenland to ascertain the state of permafrost degradation represented by molards in new and recent landsides. Finally, we will establish the use of molards as a geomorphological tool to track permafrost degradation in time and in different geological and geographical settings around the globe. By developing these actions, the project provides insights into permafrost degradation in space and time, and the hazard posed by landslides in cold environments.

RICOCHET addresses both basic/fundamental scientific questions and their societal applications. The financing instrument (PRCE: Research projects collaborative – Enterprise) supporting the project RICOCHET should allow us to develop and strengthen collaborations between the academic research and the socio-economic worlds. RICOCHET addresses the management of coastal territories that are highly exposed to CC related hazards because of their geographical position, between land and ocean. Along this particular domain, hazards come from coastal erosion and submersion as well as from flooding, flash floods, and landslides. More specifically, due to global/local environmental and societal changes, the project also considers environments issues requiring population relocation. RICOCHET involves both territory/risk managers working on societal needs and scientists, for improving the understanding of coastal dynamics from a global point of view. For this purpose, coastal areas sensitive to cliff recession and to continental flooding but also to demographic pressures are analysed. The project has 3 main objectives: 1) Understanding the present-day Land/Sea continuum dynamics (beach/cliff/hinterland) and assessment of the sedimentary balance along-shore and from continental; 2) Definition of multi-sectorial impact induced by GC (climate, environmental and social/economic changes), e.g., impacts of the increase of storms frequency and SLR on the cliff-beach system functioning. 3) Supporting the stakeholders and politics in their apprehension and questioning about the impacts of GC on coastal territories to provide them with tools to adopt sustainable coastal management strategies. Highly based on interactions of continental and coastal processes, our approach will consist in developing an integrated risk assessment (multi-hazard and multi-risk analysis). Results will provide risk communication tools, and decision/management tools for the risk management of seashore cliffs environments. Project is remarkable in 2 respects. Firstly, the originality and the particularity of the project consist in the choice of a specific type of coast (coastal cliffs and slopes subjected to fast retreat). Indeed, these territories require more than other type of coast, to consider the interactions of continental and marine processes. Secondly, the project will consider the cascade effects and chains of impacts for a global risk assessment. Because, these processes affect several sectors (agricultural areas, industrial structures, individual houses and tourism infrastructures…), an economic analysis will be conducted to analyse acceptable and sustainable management strategies for a better management and risk prevention in coastal areas. Methodological and technological innovations of RICOCHET come from the use and development of novel methods to monitor the coastal dynamics (physical processes and planning) and tools to evaluate and manage impacts. These are complementary aspects which should provide multi-temporal, multi-scale, and multi-sensor data for a better risk management. A multi-sectoral economic analysis, as well as territorial development proposals will provide the transfer of the scientific advances towards the public services to enhance the adopted strategies for the risk reduction/adjustment. This knowledge transfer will also be effective by the delivery of a diagnostic tool that could be directly integrated in the State services systems. This tool will be designed in order to be exploitable to other regions affected by these concerns. Valorisation of the results will also be done following these 2 axes: academic valorisation through publications (International Refereed Journals with high impact factors) and communications in congress, and technical and industrial valorisation, thanks to the knowledge transfer that will allow the enterprises to be more active on new markets and new products related to decision support systems and guidelines.

TRAJECTOIRE aims to establish past and predictive trajectories of contaminants at the outlets of the major French watersheds (Rhône, Loire, Seine, Garonne, Rhine, Meuse, Moselle) for substances brought about by human activities in these environments during the technological, industrial and environmental development that punctuated the 20th century: radionuclides, microplastics and their additives, and critical metals. These non-legacy substances are currently at the heart of reflections on the energy transition. By considering these three families of contaminants we expect to draw lessons learned based on the differentiated and successive time scales of their inputs, which were governed by institutions and public policies according to distinct management modes. By considering them, we expect to draw general lessons on the environmental resiliency regarding contaminants, and then to positioning or repositioning current environmental concerns face to new and future technologies. In other words, it will be a question of evaluating how society can be an actor of the resilience of the environment following anthropic disturbances from economic choices, political decisions and collective actions. In river systems, sediments convey and store most of contaminants introduced in the catchment. Therefore, sedimentary archives in perennial storage areas, such as riverbanks or alluvial margins, give testimonials on previous contaminations and anthropic pressures. Feedbacks on the ability of large rivers to absorb or remove anthropogenic pressures will be established by reconstructing time-series of: 1) contamination levels based on sedimentary records and 2) pressures exerted on environments and responses provided by institution and society, based on analyses of documentary archives. The difficulties of such retrospective exercise, requiring to cross multiple and complex information, are all the greater as the statistical sources concerning contaminants are rare or confidential. The causal links between the observed contamination levels in sedimentary archives (quantitative data sets) and the anthropic pressures determined from documented archives (qualitative and semi-quantitative data sets) will be assessed using neural network analyses for time series prediction. Time series models are purely dependent on the idea that past behavior and patterns can be used to predict future behavior and trends. By using these models on data sets acquired at the outlets of major French rivers, various anthropic pressures will be considered and their consequences on the concentration of contaminants over time will be identified. Socio-historical events, acquired from documented archive analyses, will be characterized regarding their impact on concentrations, the time-lag between their occurrence and the environmental impact, and the duration of the environmental perturbation. The values of these three parameters associated to the best fittings between the data and times series models will define key pressures to be implemented in a predictive model based on scenario in order to forecast the levels of contaminants in river systems and estimate trajectories and resiliencies for the short, medium and long terms. Our results will put forth the environmental changes that succeeded over the last industrial era, and will help to predict those expected depending on our future conduct. We consider that society needs such feedbacks as well as predictive vision in order to reinforce environmental awareness and future decision making related to the sustainability of ecosystems. Our project aims to give quantitative feed backs and predictive models based on scenarios in order to inform stakeholders on environmental impacts of their past and future decisions, over short and longer term time periods. It aims to demonstrate that society can act on environmental resiliency.

The ultimate goal of the proposal is to assess the current Ecological Quality (EcoQ) of coastal and littoral benthic habitats in Metropolitan France. It thus addresses fundamental scientific questions that will find immediate as well as long-term use for public action. Its specific objectives are to validate, develop and apply methods that rely on biological community data (composition, structure and function) and sediment imagery to characterise the ecological state of marine habitats. The RÉseau des Stations et Observatoires MARins (RESOMAR, INSU, CNRS) aims to federate coastal marine biology research at the national level. In 2007 it undertook the task of implementing databases of current and historical datasets relating to benthic and pelagic compartments of Metropolitan France costal and littoral ecosystems. RESOMAR Benthic Macrofauna DataBase (BMDB) presently holds 106 datasets containing macrofaunal abundances and biomass for a total of 9,957 sampling stations. It spans a 50-year time period (1961 to present) and covers France’s entire metropolitan coastline. The BMDB notably includes most datasets acquired within the WFD and the Habitats Directive in Metropolitan France. The BMDB is to be used to answer difficult scientific questions at spatial scales beyond that of the single marine station. It is thus particularly well adapted to tackle questions raised by the application of the WFD, the Habitats Directive and the MSFD. The spatiotemporal scope of the database will first allow an analysis of natural variation patterns in marine benthic communities. This will, allow the identification of characteristic spatial and temporal scales of variations and their consideration in subsequent analysis. Indeed, variability attributable to seasonal, other cyclic phenomenon, or changes in meteorological conditions, must be taken into account when assessing EcoQ : these parameters are, a priori, not linked to disturbance gradients and should not influence EcoQ evaluation. The Biotic Indices (BI) currently used within the WFD will be compared among themselves and others in order to evaluate their relative performance and how they relate to each other. New indices, based on the concept of multidimensional deviation in community structure from a reference condition, will be developed and compared to existing ones. The innovative method of Sediment Profile Imagery will also be used to obtain and evaluate independent estimates of EcoQ. Considering the spatial scope targeted by the MSFD and the time and resource consuming aspect of actual faunal community sampling, it appears necessary to develop and validate cost-effective complementary methods. This research will tackle the relationship between various types of disturbances and EcoQ assessment. Indeed, anthropic pressure data should be related to variation in Macrofaunal benthic community structure. Ideally, disturbance data should be of a quantitative nature, but semi-quantitative can be accommodated in statistical models. Although past research has mainly focused on disturbances related to organic enrichment, the current project will focus on multiple types of disturbances (e.g. trawling, water treatment stations, aggregate extraction, dredging, etc.) that can have different impact on community structure. In whole, the joint analysis of disturbance and community data will allow to confirm whether a BI can adequately describe the EcoQ of habitats submitted to different anthropic pressures.